Chapter Text
She had been there, alone for what felt like an eternity, she had stopped counting the days since she woke up alone. The stone had slowly crafted her home around her, the only home she really had had after so many years. Avengers Tower stood in the distance, she had gone off on a trip a few weeks ago just to give herself something else to look at for a while. There was only so much she could do on her own. The stone regenerated food for her, it gave her everything she needed, except the people she cared about.
As she made her way through the streets of fake New York, she knew something had changed in her absence, there were eyes looking at her. There were people milling around, she wasn’t alone anymore and it made her heart hurt. She knew that this day was coming, she had spent the last three years waiting for it, and the five years before that wanting to have them all back. She ran the rest of the way back to the tower, knowing that they would have gone there first, because Tony had made it a beacon for heroes, even when they were still just the six of them. It had become their home when others had started to join them. She could never truly feel at home at the upstate facility, because it meant that they weren’t all together.
By the time she reached the lobby she was out of breath, and she had realized that more and more people were peeking out from the buildings, this was the other half of the known universe. They were all trapped here, and hopefully not for long, hopefully with all of the stones together they would leave soon. She had realized that time moved differently here, she hadn’t aged much since she arrived, with the position of the sun and the moon, which she was certain was fake, it had only been a matter of months since she arrived, maybe three or four, even though with their arrival she knew that three years had passed. They would have to wait another five here before anything happened, but here that could be close to six months which was better than five years.
She didn’t turn back, instead moving towards the elevator and pressing the button with as much urgency as she could muster. The damn thing wasn’t moving fast enough, but once it was on the main Avengers floor, she was afraid of going through the doors and finding out that none of them were there.
When the doors opened, she knew that they had come home, she heard the sounds of the television, she smelled food being cooked in the kitchen, most likely is was Wanda making something wishing Vision was there with her. She heard people talking, some laughing others arguing, but it was him standing there in the middle of the floor, he was the first person she saw. There were so many memories of him, the years in the red room, the day he shot her trying to get to the person she was protecting, the first time she had seen him in Washington while she had been with Steve and Sam. He had gone after her like it was his mission, but she knew it had been because somewhere in his mind he knew that she had been important.
There was a secret that she had held onto, since the moment she had met up with Steve and Sam after the fight with Tony, after their family fell apart. The only other person who knew the secret of the whole thing was T’Challa , he swore that he wouldn’t tell a soul, and he had kept his word. The secret rendezvous, allowing her to see him, she had become his anchor to the world that had forsaken him, as his memories of their time together returned.
“James,” she said out loud, she watched as his eyes widened at the sight of her, her hair longer than the last time that they had seen each other, back to its original red, he must of thought she was a ghost there to haunt him.
“Tasha,” he said and without waiting he rushed over to her and pulled her into his arms, she knew he wanted to ask questions, she knew he was holding back, because like her, he was afraid of it being a dream.
Slowly everyone else stopped what they had been doing, walking over to see what was happening, she knew that she was going to have to explain things to them, but for now all that she had was the smell of James and the feeling of home, and she wasn’t going to let go of it for a little while.